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Article - CentralJersey.com Walk participants recall Edison star athlete who died of heart ailment
EDISON — An army of hundreds, mostly clad in red, snaked its way through the long and winding roads of a quiet residential neighborhood, stopping at the site where a little more than a year ago Edison High School football star Kittim Sherrod collapsed and died during a training run. The celebratory mood of Sunday's Kittim N. Sherrod Heart-to-Heart walk, designed to heighten awareness about Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, an often undetectable genetic cardiovascular disease that occurs in 1 in 500 people and killed the 17-year-old, took a somber turn as participants paused to gather around a makeshift memorial in front of a ranch house on 8 Mercury Road. Sherrod's family and friends, many of whom were visiting the site of his death for the first time, were overcome with grief as they eulogized the fallen gridiron hero. The wave of emotion had a rippling effect on the participants, whose 2.1-mile trek retraced Sherrod's final steps during an April 30, 2009, practice run with the high school track and field team. The event began in the senior parking lot beneath a blazing sun with loud music, water fights, football tosses, light-hearted remembrances of Sherrod and inspiring speeches from dignitaries, including Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, D-Middlesex, and Mayor Antonia Ricigliano. Members of several of the high school's athletic teams came out en masse. T-shirts and wrist bands were sold to benefit a scholarship fund in Sherrod's name and to raise money for HCM awareness. Clouds abruptly hid the afternoon sun, and the celebratory mood was simultaneously replaced by a pall that event organizers desperately wanted to avoid but feared was inevitable. Razeenah Walker, Sherrod's grandmother and the family matriarch, would have none of it. She unexpectedly stepped to the microphone and, as she has done so many times since her grandson's death, lifted the spirits of the school-community, reminding walkers of Kittim's mantra. The words, "There is no success without determination'' were inscribed on the backs of red T-shirts worn by hundreds of participants. Walker told the crowd, which included the families of Brandon James and John Taylor Babbitt, students from South Brunswick High School and the Pingry School, respectively, whose lives were claimed by HCM, and Ryan Miller, an HCM survivor from Monroe who underwent a heart transplant, that through determination the school-community would succeed in bringing about life-saving changes. Two significant developments, spurred in part by Sherrod's death, will soon take place. Diegnan is expected to introduce a bill this month to heighten HCM awareness, while Montgomery High School next month will become the first in the state to provide cardiac screenings for its student-athletes and band members. Participants applauded Walker's words and began their retreat from 8 Mercury Road to the senior parking lot. Sherrod's uncle, Kwame Andrews, tried to inspire the crowd, leading a chant of "Success! Determination!" "Razeenah's speech was about a day of celebration,'' he said. "While we were walking back, everybody was still in that sad mood. I wanted to get their energy back up, and mine, too. I was still a little out of it myself. That was the way to bring myself out of it and hopefully everybody else could come along with me." As Andrews worked the crowd, curious neighborhood residents watched the marching army of red from their doorsteps. Ron Hayes and his wife Mary McKenzie, who never met Sherrod or his family, set up a water station outside their house for walkers in the near-record heat. Their subtle but generous act epitomized how a community can come together to rally for a cause. "This day went better than I imagined," said Sherrod's uncle, Kenny Andrews. "More people showed up than I ever expected, and just the feeling and the spirit of everyone around here was so wonderful and so positive. It was just a beautiful thing. "I really feel like we made a difference in the community. I have a smile on my face right now because I'm going to go home and think about this day and I'm going to think about my nephew's life and what it meant. "He meant so much to a lot of people, and we are going to save lives. I know that for sure.''
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